Help an idiot understand his water profile

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azscoob

Brewpub coming soon!
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I got the water report from my city, and I now realize I have no idea what it means, I know what to look for, just not what to do with it. I am hoping to get up to speed on the whole water thing, but for now I need assistance deciphering it.

sodium 170 mg/L
sulfate 370 mg/L
calcium 110 mg/L
magnesium 15 mg/L
alkalinity 96 mg/L


I believe the total alkalinity is as CACO3

so what the heck does this stuff mean? What is my water good for? I went back over Palmer's info on water and am starting to pick up a rudimentary understanding, but I am a bit overwhelmed at this point, I have always used RO cut with tap water at a ratio of 3gal RO to 1 gal tap and the beers turn out pretty damn good but it can get better I'm positive of that.

Please help me get a better grasp of this subject!!
 
use the little graph thing in the back of Palmer's book. It makes it easy to determine what your water is good for as well as where items in your water would have to be for other beer colors.

I was very concerned with water when i first started brewing but Ive been making many different beers from stouts to pale ales and haven't had any problems with any of them using regular filtered water. Maybe I just don't notice the water as a problem because I havent messed with it to deem it so but I would try brewing different styles before worrying about the water. Thats just for my area though.. I'm on long island Ny.
 
I have brewed stouts with just tap water on advice of a fellow brewer,and it turned out pretty well, I do a lot of pales, blondes, and hefes, and have always just used bottled spring water until a few months ago. With all of the beers I have brewed, they have all been pretty good, no astringency or off flavors, I just want to have a better understanding of this key brewing ingredient.
 
I bet my water is the same as yours. Probability comes out of one of the canals. I only use RO water and build from that. A bit of a hassle to go and get 10 gallons of water for brew day but it makes all the difference.

For my Pilsner beers I add:

Chalk .5 grams
Gypsum NA
Calc. Chloride .5 grams
Epsom Salt .5 grams
Baking Soda NA
Non-Iodized Salt NA

and my Altbier I add

Chalk 1 gram
Gypsum 1 gram
Calc. Chloride 1 gram
Epsom Salt 1 gram
Baking Soda 1 gram
Non-Iodized Salt 1 gram

All of these beers turn out with a great mouth feel and flavor profile.

I cannot emphasis enough, do not use too much.

m.
 
I will also add this. I will never again use AZ tap water. When I moved to AZ in '95 I got right to brewing and I did not brew a good batch of beer. I could not figure out what the problem was, as in Maryland I was brewing excellent beers. I did not change anything but the water. Back then I knew nothing about water's effect on the beer flavor.

m.
 
I have brewed stouts with just tap water on advice of a fellow brewer,and it turned out pretty well, I do a lot of pales, blondes, and hefes, and have always just used bottled spring water until a few months ago. With all of the beers I have brewed, they have all been pretty good, no astringency or off flavors, I just want to have a better understanding of this key brewing ingredient.

I also do the bottled spring water thing. But it is getting expensive and a pain to get all of the water from the grocery store to back of my house. I have been looking at the filtration threads on here and thinking of trying a standard 10" carbon filter.
 
I use a filter designed for Mobile homes and trailers. It screws right on the end of my hose and is good for something like 8000 gallons? not sure but it works great and was 40bucks or so. Bought it at Ace Hardware to remove chlorine form my water.
 
So I played with the ez water calc. and if I take my tap water,with my mash and sparge volumes plugged in, cut it 50% with RO and add 3 grams non-iodized salt to the mash it puts my RA on target for my pale ale, and gives me a style profile on the bottom end of balanced, since I mash at 154 and it is 48 IBU, this should be a decent place to start? thats it? just play with additions and see where it puts the range? I guess in time the knowledge of what does what becomes second nature, like looking at a recipe and knowing what it should taste like?
 
Since you already have a pretty high Na and the Cl is unknown, I would not add table salt. 50% RO looks like a really good starting point. If your mash pH is on target, your RA is right. If your yeast floccs out well, you have enough Ca. If the beer tastes snappy and bright, your SO4:Cl2 is good.
 
One thing you should be aware of is that unlike most of the rest of the country the water profile here in Az changes quite a bit throughout the year. These changes can be pretty drastic during the monsoon season. They also vary quite a bit within the system depending on which well/wells you're closest to. The values you have are most likely an annual average for the whole system and should be used with that in mind. FWIW I buy RO water and build it up July through September.
 
The values I was given were from april testing, they sent me the test results for about a years worth of tests, all fairly close, Maricopa is on its own well system, and tests each seperately, they sent me the info on the well that my street is on, they called me to get my address so I would recieve the right information. they did state that the published water info available on their website is an average of all the wells.
 
So I played with the ez water calc. and if I take my tap water,with my mash and sparge volumes plugged in, cut it 50% with RO and add 3 grams non-iodized salt to the mash it puts my RA on target for my pale ale, and gives me a style profile on the bottom end of balanced, since I mash at 154 and it is 48 IBU, this should be a decent place to start? thats it? just play with additions and see where it puts the range? I guess in time the knowledge of what does what becomes second nature, like looking at a recipe and knowing what it should taste like?
Like 944play said, you've already got a whole bunch of sodium in there. Adding 3g non-iodized salt is going to increase the sodium even more, but won't change the RA one iota.
I agree that adding NaCl will increase the chloride concentration, but so would CaCl2, without the risk of overdosing on sodium.
As for achieving a "balanced" Cl to S04 ratio, this depends on the type of beer you are brewing. A "balanced" pale ale would be described as "bitter" or "very bitter" in the EZ spreadsheet.
I'm not saying that the EZ spreadsheet is wrong, just that the definition of "balanced" depends on the type of beer that you are brewing.

-a.
 
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